April 8, 2008

LIVINGSTON, Ala.--Tony Grooms will be on the University of West Alabama campus on Wednesday, April 16 for a luncheon presentation at noon in the Bell Conference Center. The Black Belt Symposium on Literature is open to the public. UWA students are admitted free.

 Admission is $5 for other guests to cover the cost of lunch.

Grooms will read from and discuss his novel, “Bombingham.” Framed by the Vietnam conflict, it is set primarily in suburban Birmingham during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and grapples with issues of race, justice and morality. Sponsored by the Department of Languages and Literature, a book signing will follow Grooms’ presentation.

Grooms is also the author of “Ice Poems” and “Trouble No More.” His stories and poems have been published in Callaloo, African American Review, Crab Orchard Review, George Washington Review and other literary journals. He is the recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship, an Arts Administration Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, two Lillian Smith Awards from the Southern Regional Council and is a Finalist for the Legacy Award from The Hurston-Wright Foundation.

He is a professor of Creative Writing at Kennesaw State University in Georgia, and he has also taught at Emory University and Spelman College.

Grooms comes as part of the activities leading up to the fifth annual Sucarnochee Folklife Festival. The festival, a celebration of Black Belt regional culture, takes place Saturday, April 19 in downtown Livingston and includes the Sucarnochee 5K River Run, Cornbread Cook-off, folk artists, musicians, storytellers, walking ghost tour and more. For more information about Grooms’ lecture or the Sucarnochee Folklife Festival, please call 205-652-3752.